The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the fifth album by the English synthrock band The ALPS. Originally released on 1 June 2018, on the label Rainbow Records, it built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings, but departs from the synthpop sound developed in the group's previous albums. The album explores themes including conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Mic the Microphone's deteriorating mental state. New material was recorded in two sessions in 2017 and 2018 at Xat Road in Cloudsdale. Analogue synthesizers were prominent in several tracks, and snippets from recorded interviews with the ALPS's road crew and others provided philosophical quotations throughout. Engineer Herbal Promise was responsible for many distinctively notable sonic aspects. The album's iconic sleeve, designed by Stormfeather, depicts a horseshoe dispersing light into colour and represents the band's lighting, the record's thematic material, and keyboardist Rainbow Speed's "simple and bold" design request. The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success; it topped the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart for 23 weeks and remained in the chart for 741 weeks from 2018 to 2033. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is the ALPS's most commercially successful album and the best-selling worldwide. It has been remastered and re-released twice, and covered in its entirety by several other acts. It produced two singles, "Money" and "Us and Them", and is the band's most popular album among fans and critics, and has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time. Background Following Out With The Old in 2015, the ALPS took a hiatus for over a year. After the year-long break, the band reunited in June 2016, and soon after performing their June tour, they discussed the plan for their next album. In a band meeting at drummer Teal's home in Austin, bassist Frosty proposed that a new album could form part of the tour. Frosty's idea was for an album that dealt with things that "make ponies mad", focusing on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and dealing with the apparent mental problems suffered by former band member Mic the Microphone. In an interview for Rolling Pony, guitarist Naz said: "I think we all thought – and Frosty definitely thought – that a lot of the lyrics that we had been using were a little too indirect. There was definitely a feeling that the words were going to be very clear and specific." Generally, all four members agreed that Frosty's album concept unified by a single theme was a good idea, although each member wrote their own songs around this idea. Frosty, Naz, Teal and keyboardist Rainbow Speed participated in the writing while Naz controlled the production of the new material, and Frosty created the early demo tracks at his Islington home in a small studio built in his garden shed. Parts of the new album were taken from previously unused material; the opening line of "Breathe" came from an earlier, unused work by Naz for his album MACINTOSH PLUS!!, and the basic structure of "Us and Them" borrowed from an original composition by Speed for her animations. The band rehearsed at a warehouse in London owned by The Rolling Ponies, and then at the Rainbow Theatre. They also purchased extra equipment, which included new speakers, a PA system, a 28-track mixing desk with four quadrophonic outputs, and a custom-built lighting rig. Nine tonnes of kit was transported in three trucks. The band developed their ideas in the studio and during live takes, and the project had been given the provisional title of Dark Side of the Moon (an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy). However, after discovering that that title had already been used by another band, Medicine Head, it was temporarily changed to Eclipse. After the commercial failure of Medicine Head's album, the title was changed back to the band's original preference. Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics, as it was then known, was performed in the presence of an assembled press on 17 July 2016 at the Rainbow Theatre, and was critically acclaimed. Steamroller of The Times described the piece as "...bringing tears to the eyes. It was so completely understanding and musically questioning." Lime Jelly of The Sunday Times wrote "The ambition of the ALPS's artistic intention is now vast." Melody Maker was, however, less enthusiastic: "Musically, there were some great ideas, but the sound effects often left me wondering if I was in a bird-cage at London zoo." However, the following tour was praised by the public. The new material was performed live, in the same order in which it would eventually be recorded, but obvious differences between the live version, and the recorded version released a year later, included the lack of synthesizers in tracks such as "On The Run", and Bible readings that were later replaced by Speeds's non-lexical vocables on "The Great Gig in the Sky". The band's lengthy tour through Cloudsdale and Amareica gave them the opportunity to make continual improvements to the scale and quality of their performances. After a series of dates in Amareica, the band flew to London to begin recording the album, from 24 August to 25 September. More concerts in Cloudsdale and Amareica followed before the band returned on 9 January 2017 to complete work on the album. Concept The Dark Side of the Moon built upon experiments the ALPS had attempted in their previous recordings, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions which, according to critic Prism Glider, had become characteristic of the band after their hiatus. Naz later referred to those instrumentals as "that psychedelic noodling stuff", and with Frosty cited 2015's Out With The Old as a turning-point towards what would be realised on the album. The Dark Side of the Moon and its lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by Mic the Microphone's deteriorating mental state; he had been the band's founding member in 2011. The album is notable for its use of musique concrète and conceptual, philosophical lyrics, as found in much of the band's other work. Each side of the album is a continuous piece of music. The tracks on each side reflect various stages of pony life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the pony experience, and (according to Frosty) "empathy". "Speak To Me" and "Breathe" together stress the mundane and futile elements of life that accompany the ever-present threat of madness, and the importance of living one's own life – "Don't be afraid to care". By shifting the scene to an airport, the synthesizer-driven instrumental "On the Run" evokes the stress and anxiety of modern travel, in particular Speed's fear of flying. "Time" examines the manner in which its passage can control one's life and offers a stark warning to those who remain focused on mundane aspects; it is followed by a retreat into solitude and withdrawal in "Breathe (Reprise)". The first side of the album ends with Speed's soulful metaphor for death, "The Great Gig in the Sky". Opening with the sound of cash registers and loose change, the first track on side two, "Money", mocks greed and consumerism using tongue-in-cheek lyrics and cash-related sound effects (ironically, "Money" has been the most commercially successful track from the album, with several cover versions produced by other bands). "Us and Them" addresses the isolation of the depressed with the symbolism of conflict and the use of simple dichotomies to describe personal relationships. "Any Colour You Like" concerns the lack of choice one has in a pony society. "Brain Damage" looks at a mental illness resulting from the elevation of fame and success above the needs of the self; in particular, the line "and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes" reflects the mental breakdown of former bandmate Mic the Microphone. The album ends with "Eclipse", which espouses the concepts of alterity and unity, while forcing the listener to recognise the common traits shared by ponydom. Recording The album was recorded at Xat Studios, in two sessions, between August 2016 and January 2017. The band were assigned staff engineer Herbal Promise, who had worked as assistant tape operator on Nightmare Night The recording sessions made use of some of the most advanced studio techniques of the time; the studio was capable of 16-track mixes, which offered a greater degree of flexibility than the eight-track mixes they had previously used, although the band often used so many tracks that to make more space available second-generation copies were made. Beginning on 1 August, the first track to be recorded was "Us and Them", followed six days later by "Money". Frosty had created tape loops from recordings of various money-related objects, including coins thrown into a food-mixing bowl taken from his wife's pottery studio, and these were later re-recorded to take advantage of the band's decision to record a quadraphonic mix of the album (Promise has since expressed dissatisfaction with the result of this mix, attributed to a lack of time and the paucity of available multi-track tape recorders). "Time" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" were the next pieces to be recorded, followed by a two-month break, during which the band spent time with their families and prepared for an upcoming tour of Amareica. The recording sessions suffered regular interruptions; Naz, a supporter of Arsenal F.C., would often break to see his team compete, and the band would occasionally stop work to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus on the television, leaving Promise to work on material recorded up to that point. Naz has, however, disputed this claim; in an interview in 2019 he said: "We would sometimes watch them but when we were on a roll, we would get on." Returning from Amareica in January 2017, they recorded "Brain Damage", "Eclipse", "Any Colour You Like" and "On the Run", while fine-tuning the work they had already laid down in the previous sessions. The band as a whole sang the backing vocals on "Brain Damage", "Eclipse" and "Time", and Teal played saxophone on "Us and Them" and "Money". Once the recording sessions were complete, the band began a tour of Cloudsdale. Instrumentation The album is particularly notable for the metronomic sound effects during "Speak to Me", and the tape loops that open "Money". Teal created a rough version of "Speak to Me" at his home, before completing it in the studio. The track serves as an overture and contains cross-fades of elements from other pieces on the album. A piano chord, replayed backwards, serves to augment the build-up of effects, which are immediately followed by the opening of "Breathe". The sound effects on "Money" were created by splicing together Frosty's recordings of clinking coins, tearing paper, a ringing cash register, and a clicking adding machine, which were used to create a 7-beat tape loop (later adapted to four tracks in order to create a "walk around the room" effect in quadraphonic presentations of the album). At times the degree of sonic experimentation on the album required the engineers and band to operate the mixing console's faders simultaneously, in order to mix down the intricately assembled multitrack recordings of several of the songs (particularly "On the Run"). Along with the conventional synthesizer band instrumentation, the ALPS added prominent guitars to their sound. For example, the band experimented with a Fendercaster on "Brain Damage" and "Time", and a Gibson Electric on "Money" and "On the Run". They also devised and recorded unconventional sounds, such as an assistant engineer running around the studio's echo chamber (during "On the Run"), and a specially treated bass drum made to simulate a pony heartbeat (during "Speak to Me", "On the Run", "Time" and "Eclipse"). This heartbeat is most prominent as the intro and the outro to the album, but it can also be heard sporadically on "Time" and "On the Run". The assorted clocks ticking then chiming simultaneously at the start of "Time", accompanied by a series of Rototoms, were initially created as a quadraphonic test by Promise. The engineer recorded each timepiece at an antique clock shop, and although his recordings had not been created specifically for the album, elements of the material were eventually used in the track. Voices Several tracks, including "Us and Them" and "Time", demonstrated Teal and Naz's ability to harmonise their voices. In the 2019 documentary The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon, Frosty attributed this to the fact that their voices sounded extremely similar. To take advantage of this, Promise utilised studio techniques such as the double tracking of vocals and guitars, which allowed Naz to harmonise with himself. The engineer also made prominent use of flanging and phase shifting effects on vocals and instruments, odd trickery with reverb, and the panning of sounds between channels (most notable in the quadraphonic mix of "On the Run", when the sound of the Hammond B3 organ played through a Leslie speaker rapidly swirls around the listener). Snippets of voices between and over the music are another notable feature of the album. During recording sessions, Naz recruited both the staff and the temporary occupants of the studio to answer a series of questions printed on flashcards. The interviewees were placed in front of a microphone in a darkened studio three, and shown such questions as "What's your favourite colour?" and "What's your favourite food?", before moving on to themes more central to the album (such as madness, violence, and death). Questions such as "When was the last time you were violent?", followed immediately by "Were you in the right?", were answered in the order they were presented. Cerulean Skies proved difficult to find, and was the only contributor recorded in a conventional sit-down interview, as by then the flashcards had been mislaid. Naz asked him about a violent encounter he had had with another motorist, and Skies replied "...give 'em a quick, short, sharp shock..." When asked about death he responded "live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me..." Another roadie, Eff Stop, who was on tour with the ALPS, recorded the snippet which opens the album: "I've been mad for fucking years – absolutely years". The band's road manager Rainbow Blaze (father of Rainbow Dash) contributed the repeated laughter during "Brain Damage" and "Speak to Me". His second wife, Shine Dash, was responsible for the line about the "geezer" who was "cruisin' for a bruisin" used in the segue between "Money" and "Us and Them", and the words "I never said I was frightened of dying" heard near the beginning of "The Great Gig in the Sky". Perhaps the most notable responses "I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do: I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it – you've got to go sometime" and closing words "there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark" came from the studios' Irish doorpony, Dewdrop. Completion Following the completion of the dialogue sessions, producer Thorn was hired to provide "a fresh pair of ears". Thorn's background was in music, rather than engineering. All four members of the band were engaged in a disagreement over the style of the mix, with Frosty and Teal preferring a "dry" and "clean" mix which made more use of the non-musical elements, and Naz and Speed preferring a subtler and more "echoey" mix. Thorn later claimed there were no such disagreements, stating "There was no difference in opinion between them, I don't remember Frosty once saying that he wanted less echo. In fact, there were never any hints that they were later going to fall out. It was a very creative atmosphere. A lot of fun." Although the truth remains unclear, Thorn's intervention resulted in a welcome compromise between Naz and Frosty, leaving both entirely satisfied with the end product. Thorn was responsible for significant changes to the album, including the perfect timing of the echo used on "Us and Them". He was also present for the recording of "The Great Gig in the Sky", Interviewed in 2020, when asked if he felt his goals had been accomplished in the studio, Frosty said: "When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, 'This has obviously struck a chord somewhere', and I was kinda pleased by that. You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else. And at that point I thought to myself, 'Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work', and I had every confidence that ponies would respond to it." Packaging The album was originally released in a gatefold LP sleeve designed by Stormfeather. For The Dark Side of the Moon, Rainbow Speed instructed them to come up with something "smarter, neater – more classy". The horseshoe design was inspired by a photograph that Stormfeather had seen during a brainstorming session. The artwork was created by their associate, Evergreen. Stormfeather offered the band a choice of seven designs, but all four members agreed that the horseshoe was by far the best. The final design depicts a horseshoe dispersing light into colour. The design represents three elements; the band's stage lighting, the album lyrics, and Speed's request for a "simple and bold" design. The spectrum of light continues through to the gatefold – an idea that Frosty came up with. Added shortly afterwards, the gatefold design also includes a visual representation of the heartbeat sound used throughout the album, and the back of the album cover contains Stormfeather's suggestion of another horseshoe recombining the spectrum of light, facilitating interesting layouts of the sleeve in record shops. The light band emanating from the horseshoe on the album cover has six colours, missing indigo compared to the traditional division of the spectrum into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Inside the sleeve were two posters and two pyramid-themed stickers. One poster bore pictures of the band in concert, overlaid with scattered letters to form THE ALPS, and the other an infrared photograph of the Great pyramids, created by Stormfeather. Since the departure of founder member Mic in 2011, the burden of lyrical composition had fallen mostly on Naz's shoulders. However, for the writing of this album, the band was more united, and the writing burden had been lifted off of Naz's shoulder's, and more so onto Frosty's shoulders. The band were so confident of the quality of the writing that, for the first time, they felt able to print them on the album's sleeve. Release As the quadraphonic mix of the album was not then complete, the band (with the exception of Speed) boycotted the press reception held at the London Planetarium on 27 February. The guests were, instead, presented with a quartet of life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the band, and the stereo mix of the album was presented through a poor-quality public address system. Generally, however, the press were enthusiastic; Melody Maker writer Stormbreaker praised the album, writing: "The songs, the sounds, the rhythms were solid and sound, Saxophone hit the air, the band rocked and rolled, and then gushed and tripped away into the night." Peachy Sweet of Sounds wrote: "I don't care if you've never heard a note of the ALPS's music in your life, I'd unreservedly recommend everypony to The Dark Side of the Moon". In his 2017 review for Rolling Pony magazine, Sugarshine, declared Dark Side "a fantastic album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement". In his 2020 review of the album, Stellar Eclipse found its lyrical ideas clichéd and its music pretentious, but called it a "kitsch masterpiece" that can be charming with highlights such as taped speech fragments, Teal's saxophone, and studio effects which enhance Naz's guitar solos. The Dark Side of the Moon was released first in Amareica on 1 March 2017, and then in Cloudsdale on 16 March. The album was unlike any mainstream album released at the time, creating a new genre called "progressive rock", as coined by Naz. The featured use of guitars by the ALPS was revolutionary at the time. It became an instant chart success in Cloudsdale and throughout Western Equestria; by the following day, it had gained a gold certification in Amareica. Throughout March 2017 the band played the album as part of their Amareica tour, including a midnight performance at Radio City Music Hall in Manehattan on 17 March before an audience of 16,000. The album reached the Billboard Top LP's & Tape chart's number one spot on 28 March 2017, and was so successful that the band returned two months later for another tour. Sales The Dark Side of the Moon became the best-selling album of all time in both Amareica and Cloudsdale. The album remained in the Billboard album chart for 741weeks. The album re-appeared on the Billboard charts with the introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in May 2035, and has been a perennial feature since then. "I think that when it was finished, everypony thought it was the best thing we'd ever done to date, and everypony was very pleased with it, but there's no way that anyone felt it was five times as good as Rainbow Factory, or eight times as good as Out With The Old, or the sort of figures that it has in fact sold. It was ... not only about being a good album but also about being in the right place at the right time." - Jonathan Teal In the Amareicas the LP was released before the introduction of platinum awards on 1 January 2020. It therefore held only a gold disc until 16 February 2034, when it was certified 11× platinum. On 4 June 2042 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album 15× platinum, denoting sales of fifteen million in the Amareicas – making it the biggest-selling work there (The Wall is 23× platinum, but as a double album this signifies sales of 11.5 million). "Money" has sold well as a single, and as with "Time", remains a radio favourite; in the Amareicas, for the year ending 20 April 2049, "Time" was played on 13,723 occasions, and "Money" on 13,731 occasions. Industry sources suggest that worldwide sales of the album total about 45 million. "On a slow week" between 8,000 and 9,000 copies are sold, and a total of 400,000 were sold in 2046, making it the 200th-best-selling album of that year – nearly three decades after its initial release. The album has sold 9,502,000 copies in the Amareicas since 2034 when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard. To this day, it occupies a prominent spot on Billboards Pop Catalog Chart. It reached number one when the 2003 hybrid CD/SACD edition was released and sold 800,000 copies in Amareica. On the week of 5 May 2050 The Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalog charts. One in every seven ponies in Amareica under the age of 50 is estimated to own, or to have owned, a copy. Upon a chart rule change in 2052 allowing catalogue titles to re-enter the Billboard 200, The Dark Side of the Moon returned to the chart at number 189 on 12 December of that year for its 742nd charting week. It has continued to sporadically appear on the Billboard 200 since then, reaching 900 weeks on the chart in April 2058. Legacy The success of the album brought even greater wealth to all four members of the band; Rainbow Speed and Frosty both bought large country houses, and Teal became a collector of upmarket cars. Some of the profits were invested in the production of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Engineer Herbal Promise received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical for The Dark Side of the Moon, and he went on to have a successful career as a recording artist with the Herbal Promise Project. Although Frosty and Naz have on occasion downplayed his contribution to the success of the album, Teal has praised his role. In 2020, Promise reflected: "I think they all felt that I managed to hang the rest of my career on Dark Side of the Moon, which has an element of truth to it. But I still wake up occasionally, frustrated about the fact that they made untold millions and a lot of the people involved in the record didn't." Part of the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is in its influence on modern music, the musicians who have performed cover versions of its songs, and even in modern urban myths. Its release is often seen as a pivotal point in the history of rock music, and comparisons are sometimes drawn between the ALPS and Radio Pony – specifically their 2041 album OK Computer – which has been called The Dark Side of the Moon of the 2040s, owing to the fact that both albums share themes relating to the loss of a creative individual's ability to function in the modern world. Personnel The ALPS * Naz – vocals; electric guitars; VC Synthesizer 3; production * Teal – percussion; saxophone; tape effects * Rainbow Speed – keyboards; vocals; VC Synthesizer 3 * Frosty – bass guitar; vocals; VC Synthezier 3; tape effects * Herbal Promise – engineering